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- Anti-Asian hate crimes have been on the rise throughout the pandemic.
- The hate crimes have in part been tied to misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic.
- A new study found there's limited Asian American and Pacific Islander representation in Hollywood.
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A new report that looked at the top-grossing Hollywood films over the past decade found that only a few had Asian American and Pacific Islander representation.
The "The Prevalence and Portrayal of Asian and Pacific Islanders Across 1,300 Popular Films," study from the University of Southern California looked at 1,300 top-grossing movies from 2007 to 2019 and found that only 44 films featured AAPI leads or co-leads. Of those 44, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was the lead in a third.
Additionally, almost 40% of the films had no AAPI representation.
In those 13 years, only 3.4% of the top-grossing movies had an API lead. Those who did had characters that were played by just 22 actors.
"People often ask me whether representations of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are improving," sociologist Nancy Wang Yuen, one of the report's lead authors, told the Los Angeles Times. "Unfortunately, when representation looks like tokenism, Hollywood is doing the bare minimum for inclusion. In 2019, 30% of API primary and secondary characters were either [the only one] or interacted with no other API characters onscreen. We need to see more than one API character onscreen interacting with one another in meaningful ways."
The findings come at a time when there's a rise in anti-Asian hatred across the US and reports of attacks against Asian Americans have increased dramatically in the past year. The crimes, which have skyrocketed during the pandemic, can in part be attributed to misinformation on the coronavirus.
Last month, a man used a metal post to trash an Asian American-owned convenience store while yelling racial slurs in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a 65-year-old Asian woman was yelled at and assaulted while on her way to church in New York City.
It also comes at a time when many are demanding proper representation and diversity in Hollywood. The study found that during the same timespan when only 22 AAPI actors were leads, 336 white male actors were given starring roles.
While 7.1% of the population identifies as Asian, Asian American, or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, only 5.9% of speaking roles in the films reviewed were from the group.
Additionally, 2019 films that were reviewed were found to perpetuate harmful stereotypes of AAPI, where characters are either sidekicks, villains, silenced, tokenized, or isolated.
"These findings offer more evidence that the epidemic of invisibility continues to persist and with serious consequences," Stacy Smith, one of the report's lead authors told the Times. "Mass media is one factor that can contribute to aggression towards this community. When portrayals erase, dehumanize, or otherwise demean the API community, the consequences can be dire. Without intention and intervention, the trends we observed will continue."